Invincer

Anyone see anything I did wrong that maybe I am missing? The descriptions, genres, don't show up on Age of Empires as that was the one I was testing before doing them all... Anyone have a working PC games database example they can show that works on showing the descriptions inside GameEx? Thanks for any and all input and help!

I took screenshots to hopefully show you what I have done wrong, because it isn't working. Anything stand out that needs changing? Thanks in advance... this is all getting tougher to set up than the cab was... lol Whatever I do the description won't display... also genres, etc

Okay, I may have been able to accomplish fixing my issues with focus by using PsKill in the launch before to kill GameEx when the game starts. In truth, I think I like this better, no having to worry about trying to change or set up wrappers, and it isn't a dedicated game macine. So after exiting the game I prefer being at the desktop, not back in Gamex. My next issue is one I was able to get working early last year on another machine, but am having a heck of a time figuring out what I am doing wrong in setting up a PC Games database in Access for GameEx. Nothing I do seems to make GameEx look at the database for description, names, genres, etc. Could someone who has a functioning PC Games database in GameEx tell my how you have it laid out in case I am missing something on this. Thanks

Well is there a command to or way to make it close as it launches a game and stay closed till it is reopened? Because working with some but not with others on pc games on my computer makes that my only option at this point

no, the monitor switching profile isn't run during gameex. I tried manually changing to using only one screen, no profiles involved; still same problems on the same games. Is there a way to make Gameex close itself as soon as it launches a game without waiting to come back open when the game closes Tom? Thanks for the link Tempest, unfortunately it does absolutely nothing when putting a batch with the command to use the process killer to kill or close gameex. Gameex still comes back the way it should on some games but on many it just stays in the taskbar still. The "taskkill /f /im gameex.exe" works but pisses gameex off to the tune of bringing up the error window even though it is supposedly disabled in the advanced config...

Also advanced config is acting weird. I select windowed mode, and do not report errors. After running a game, error reporting window comes up regardless. Now upon checking advanced config, the options were changed back to full screen and error reporting was changed back to ask me about error reporting. Both have changed back on their own as if my choices were overridden once gameex starts...

Damn! This might work eventually, but right now, even when I disable error reporting in the advanced config, it doesn't matter. About 5 seconds after gameex closes and on the launched game screen, the gameex error window comes up along with the report error window. Is there a way to make sure these don't come up? A way to kill gameex process and have it just stop without the error reporting or pop up windows?? I even selected never ask again, but it still comes up

Actually, if I can get it working correctly, I know I will like this better on my main PC. Maybe Tom could add an option in the advanced config for closing gameex upon launching of the game? That would be great. My cabinet wouldn't use it, and home theater PCs wouldn't want it, but in the case of my main PC which is used for tons of things, I would rather have the option for gameex to close right away after or before the launching of the game. There has to be others out there that are running (or wanting to run) gameex on non-dedicated-only-for-gaming machines out there. That could be a whole untapped market for gameex which NONE of the other frontends out there seem to consider. Using Media center for PC game launching is lackluster, and the built in game explorer in Vista and 7 are complete jokes. The other game launchers I looked up (Games Launcher and Game Select are two I found) were way too blah and even more lackluster than media center... Completely untapped market here Tom!

Yep, probably could do the media center easier, but it doesn't have the customizations of how to display everything the way Tom has done Gameex. The game, the boxart, the trailers previews, the manuals, etc. I don't even like Media Center on my home theater PC and use XBMC because of the customizations it allows. I tried Diablo as my test case using a "launch before" bat of running killgameex.bat (which runs "taskkill /f /im gameex.exe). It seemed to work in general, but the gameex error window came up, it certainly did not like being killed that way...

No, the profiler is set up before I get into Gameex. Besides, all it does is put the resolution to a preset favorite. No pop ups, launchers, or anything else happens with them. Is there a way to just have gameex close when it launches anything? That would be preferable to what it's doing now, and after closing the game I may want to do something else other than launch another game anyways. So it would be fine to launch the game, close gameex by itself (less resources used that way anyway i would guess), and then after closing the game be back at my desktop. Then when I want another game to play, I just start gameex... Maybe this way it can be as simple as starting a lnk shortcut without having to worry about focus or running in the taskbar while the game is playing. Closing gameex upon game launch would actually be preferable come to think of it.

Can't check now, at work; but I am reasonably sure an older game like Diablo and many others from that era do change to a much smaller resolution. As Tom said though, I wasn't thinking this would make a difference in this situation. I have 3 monitors setup normally, but I switch to just the one in a "gaming" profile I have saved on the ATI software. Multiple monitors cause strange stuff on many games, but only one is active when Gameex is used. I will probably set it up to autoload the profile when gameex starts if I can get gameex working for all the PC games. Thanks.

There was a loader in the folder (dloader.exe), but I was launching the game from a shortcut that went straight to diablo.exe; which is also the name of the process when the game is running.

I tried what Mario suggested, and made sure all other windows are closed. It seemed to help somewhat. In running Diablo the game did come up on the screen to play instead of the black screen with the game reduced to the taskbar the first time I tried it, but on the second try the black screen returned. Will have to try a few more time when I get home. Unfortunately, Gameex is still sitting in the taskbar with at least some focus as I can still hear the preview video in Gameex playing while playing in Diablo. Then when exiting Diablo, gameex stays on the taskbar and has to be clicked to regain focus. Based on what Tom was saying, I checked processes in case of a launcher being the issue. Unfortunately, the process for Diablo is simply Diablo.exe... and the way it starts is with a link straight to Diablo.exe. That can't be a launcher causing this since the process is the same as the launch exe. I do have to run Diablo in compatibility mode to get it to run correctly on Win7 64bit... had to run as Windows 95, as admin, disabling visual themes, desktop composition, and display scaling. Could that have anything to do with it? I am using Diablo as the example as it is one I know couldn't be using a launch exe to cause the issue based on a different process... Any ideas?

Hi Tom, Thanks for the response. It is doing these things with all the PC game links though. They can't all be using loaders. Even old games like Diablo (on this case both the game and gameex get minimized). If using emulator configuration files as explained on the FAQ, PC games would have to each have an emulator category assigned since the processes would all be different too. I definitely don't want that...

Is there any special tricks to try and get PC games to run through GameEx? This seems way harder than back when I ran the cab on it with the emulators. All I want is a frontend on my main computer for PC games. I am running Windows 7 64 bit. I have tried numerous settings, and perused the forums for info but the same problems keep surfacing. When I launch a game lnk, either Gameex minimized to the taskbar while the audio from the game trailer continues to play through GameEx as the game plays; or both the game and gameex are reduced to the taskbar but again the game trailer audio continues to play from the taskbar in gameex. Then when closing the game, gameex stays on the taskbar and I have to manually resize it. . I have tried with numerous shortcuts but gameex behaves following one of these two issues on them all. Any ideas or thoughts on how to get this working correctly? Thanks.

Hi Guys, It has been a looong time since I have messed around with GameEx; but I was going to try and set it all up on my gaming PC. Everything seems to be going fine for all but the descriptions. I have a field set up on a PC games Access file (based on the template) for descriptions, but they don't show up in GameEx (along with the year and company). I may be missing something simple, but that was all I remembered having to do before and they showed up. What am I missing...? Thanks!

Hey, it's actually pretty cool. I think it is of course better on lower resolutions than higher ones, the stretching makes it hard to read. Is there any way to have it run only as the desktop wallpaper/changer on the secondary monitor? That would be cool if it could display and show random games like every 5 minutes when that little monitor isn't actively doing anything (which is the majority of the time)...

Hey Tom, Whatever happened to the DesktopMAME? I was looking for something along the lines of what it looks like it could do, and found the reference to it as one of your software on http://tomspeirs.com/desktopmame/ but I don't see any reference to it here on the Spesoft forums as a software release or anything. I tried downloading it and running it but it wouldn't start (maybe not 64bit compatible, I don't know).

Just to throw my two cents in, IMO HeadKaze's plugin is much more useful and easier to configure. LED Blinkie does NOT give you the ability to feed text to BetaBrite or other LED sign displays; you can set up in one fell swoop events ranging from sounds, LCD buttons, and LED messages to play events on any number of things... Just my two cents...

Just cuious Tom.... Why would you wish a happy 4th of July to only your American friends? People don't have a 4th of July in other countries?

Hi Headkaze, (Happy 4th of July!) Everything is yes on setup; I played with the options a bit more and after turning off the selection of exit on menu (or something like that); it started coming up. However, now it comes up with an error saying "HiToText has stopped working: A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available." I then have to click the close program button and then the control panel comes up. Funny thing is, I said okay fine, I will unselect the option for high scores. ... and then it still gave me this error anyways. I had this once before on my HDTV and don't remember how I got it to stop popping up the error, so I will search the posts and see if anyone else has encountered it. If I did twice on two different machines, it has probably been addressed already. Thanks.

Any other reasons might be causing CPWizard to not show the panel before the MAME game is launched? All the path to the wizard and gameex are correct.

These were made for the TunnelVision theme. However they can be used for that theme or for any other theme; it is up to you. Some people may even want to use some as backgrounds. They should work with 4:3 or 16:9 or any theme that uses the HQ Circo MAME style movies as they used similar dimensions (knowing I would be using those AVIs in MAME, I wanted my logos to have the same fit). I am including my config menu settings I use to line them up with the menu items, as a reference point or example. Too big for me to host all these; and RapidShare on the theme backgrounds was a nightmare to use and for people to download from. So using MegaUpload (thanks for the recommendation by Adultery). The menus can be seen "a little" from the theme video I posted before, just too long on some of the animations to show them all of the video would have been too long to fit on Youtube. This is my custommenu.ini example to correctly point to these avis (had problems pointing with the Custom Menus application in GameEx, some logos aren't easy to change like the default "allgames" one; but being specific and including the .avi extension in the custommenu.ini worked fine). [ROOT] Title=Start Item_1=-1,Games Library,1,gameslibrary.png Item_2=-1,MultiMedia,2,media.png Item_3=-1,Applications,3,applications.png Item_4=-1,Internet,4,internet.png Item_5=-1,Utilities,5,apps.png [MENU_1] Title=Games Library Item_1=13,All Games List,0,allgames.avi Item_2=12,Favorites,0,favorites.avi Item_3=15,Game Search,0,gamesearch.avi Item_4=10,Last Played Games,0 Item_5=9,Most Played Games,0,mostgames.avi Item_6=11,Play a Random Game,0,randomgame.avi Item_7=-1,Emulated Games,16,emus.avi [MENU_2] Title=MultiMedia Item_1=25,DVDs on Disk,0,dvddisk.avi Item_2=28,eBooks,0,ebooks.avi Item_3=24,Jukebox,0,jukebox.avi Item_4=29,Karaoke,0,karaoke.avi Item_5=27,Media Library,0,medialibrary.avi Item_6=15,Media Search,0,mediasearch.avi Item_7=30,Pictures,0,pictures.avi Item_8=23,Play DVD,0,dvds.avi Item_9=26,Radio,0,radio.avi Item_10=22,Videos,0,videos.avi [MENU_3] Title=Applications [MENU_4] Title=Internet Item_1=14,Online News Feeds,0,news.avi Item_2=3,Weather,1,weather.avi [MENU_5] Title=Utilities Item_1=6,Edit GameEx Configuration,0,config.avi Item_2=8,Export to MCE,0,exportMCE.avi Item_3=5,Start Attract Mode Screensaver,0,attract.avi Item_4=7,Statistics,0,stats.avi Item_5=4,Theme Picker,0,themes.avi Item_6=-1,Change Status Modes,6,status.avi [MENU_6] Title=Change Status Modes Item_1=16,Exit GameEx,0,exit.png Item_2=19,Hibernate,0,hibernate.png Item_3=17,Log Off,0,logoff.png Item_4=21,Restart,0,restart.png Item_5=18,Shut Down,0,shutdown.png Item_6=20,Standby,0,standby.png The regular un-animated logos in my menu you can get from the basic theme itself at http://www.invincer.com/TunnelVision/Tunne...n(1280x720).zip (Logos: Exit, Hibernate, Logoff, Restart, Shutdown, Standby, Gameslibrary, Media, Applications, Internet, Apps) These animated logos were divided up into 4 zips hosted on MegaUpload... individually it would have been a pain more than just downloading a whole group and using what you want. #1 MultiMedia, download link http://www.megaupload.com/?d=5GU47TGL This includes the whole media group except one. Included are dvddisk.avi, ebooks.avi, jukebox.avi, karaoke.avi, medialibrary.avi, mediasearch.avi, pictures.avi, dvds.avi, and videos.avi. The video.avi is not one of my creation at all, but a video montage of super-hero movies on YouTube that was just too awesome for me not to use. The radio.avi is immensely big; I probably should shorten it, but it keeps the whole skit on there at the moment. Speaking of which... #2 Radio.avi logo, download link http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4LWI7XZN #3 The main games menu logos, download link http://www.megaupload.com/?d=989L8TS0 This includes all but one of the main game menu I run on my theme as listed on my config above. It includes allgames.avi, favorites.avi, gamesearch.avi, randomgame.avi, and emus.avi. The mostgames.avi files did not play the audio correctly in conjunction with the video, so I will have to try and fix that this weekend and then post it solo. #4 The Application/Utilities logos, download link http://www.megaupload.com/?d=GYRFGKAW This one includes the miscellaneous apps and utilities. Including news.avi, weather.avi, exportMCE.avi, attract.avi, stats.avi, themes.avi, status.avi. If you know of any Internet or Applications deserving of an inclusion let me know and I will add it. Next week, will concentrate on the 4:3 version of my theme as I wait for my cab internal PC parts to come from newegg and zipzoomfly. If this works well on MegaUpload, then I will reupload my theme backgrounds to MegaUpload and repost them over the RapidShare ones. Let me know what you think of these.

Thanks Tom, Will double check the paths in CPWizard and GameEx when I get home. 9 seconds? Really? Seemed more like 5, must count the load time, or maybe because there are so many things on the control panel it can be dizzying and the 9 seconds seems like half of that... would be nice to increase it to 15 then. Hopefully some day in the future there may be an option to change how long it displays before MAME launches. Thanks.

Hi guys, I have a custom CP layout created from CPwizard and it looks awesome. At first it came up perfectly before launching MAME (through GameEx), and then the MAME game loaded fine. I started playing around with the options (was trying to see if there was an option to make it display a little longer before launching the MAME game). Somehow in the settings however, I must have mucked something up because now it does not display at all before a game, only if I pause the game in MAME. I tried changing options and even adding command line switches to the GameEx line where the path is put in in the GameEx adv config. Any idea how to get back the CPwizard pre-game-launch display (with about 10 seconds would be good also, which is what I was trying to get it to do to begin with)? Thanks.